Roughly two-thirds of Department of Justice lawyers tasked with fielding the constant legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s policies have quit in frustration.
Around 69 of the 110 lawyers who work in the DOJ’s Federal Programs Branch, which responds to lawsuits against the administration, have left their roles since the 2024 election, Reuters reports. The number is 62.7 per cent of the branch.
One lawyer who left the unit said staff have become demoralized and frustrated by the nonstop barrage of legal challenges to Trump’s policies, which include the administration’s attempts to do away with birthright citizenship, detain and deport migrants without due process, impose tariffs on U.S. trading partners, and reshape the federal bureaucracy. At least four lawyers said they quit over concerns that Trump’s steps to gut federal agencies and block funding to institutions like Harvard University violate the Constitution.
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“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” one departed DOJ lawyer told Reuters. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”
At least three lawyers from the Federal Programs Branch also quit because they feared they’d face sanction for refusing to bow to pressure from the department to skew facts in court or violate other ethics rules.
While high turnover at the DOJ unit is common between administrations, sources told Reuters this level of staff turnover in the middle of a presidential administration is unprecedented. Among those who have left are seasoned lawyers who worked across administrations, including Trump’s first one.
“We’ve never had an administration pushing the legal envelope so quickly, so aggressively, and across such a broad range of government policies and programs,” Peter Keisler, who led the DOJ’s Civil Division under former President George W. Bush, told the outlet. “The demands are intensifying at the same time that the ranks of lawyers there to defend these cases are dramatically thinning.”
The mass exodus has led the Trump administration to exempt the DOJ from the federal government hiring freeze imposed by Trump as part of his federal cost-cutting plans, according to the report.
In a statement, the White House defended the constitutionality of the administration’s policies but did not directly address the exodus at the DOJ.
“Every action the President and his administration have taken is legal, and the historic number of legal victories in district courts and the Supreme Court underscores this fact,” White House Spokesperson Harrison Fields told the Daily Beast. “Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on.”
“Every member of the President’s DOJ and White House Counsel is committed to adhering to the Constitution and defending the President’s Article II authorities, which the radical left is actively trying to strip from him,” Fields added.
A DOJ spokesperson told Reuters that those who remain in the unit are battling an “unprecedented” amount of lawsuits challenging Trump’s agenda.
“The Department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the Supreme Court and will continue to defend the President’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from the Daily Beast.
